Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Don't Think, TWICE...

Yesterday, a half-hour after receiving a “Breaking News” email from TWICE magazine announcing it had been sold, I received another email with the subject line, this time all caps, declaring “TWICE CES DAILY CLOSING.”

The logical conclusion? With the sale concluded, the new owners had decided to close down the magazine's daily editions at CES, January's giant consumer electronics show. But, lo and behold, the email was actually letting recipients know about an ad closing deadline!

I wanted to tweet that second email immediately as an example of how a poor subject line combined with poor timing can have unforeseen circumstances, but discovered I couldn’t do that. (If there’s an app for tweeting emails, I don’t have it.)

I wish I did, because a few hours later. at a launch party for a new virtual time travel world Next Island, David Post, the game's founder and CEO, informed me he head seen news that TWICE was shutting down. Unlike me, he hadn't had the time to actually open the second email! After I explained what had transpired, David pointed out that neither of us should have been receiving that email to begin with, since we aren't potential advertisers.

Who knows how many other folks on TWICE's email list also think the publication has shut down, or at least that it won't be publishing at CES next month? Perhaps whomever's in charge of crisis management at the magazine has been caught amidst the usual turmoil caused by an ownership change -- but it's now been about 28 hours and I'm still waiting for TWICE to send another email to its list that would clarify the matter.